by Ian McDonald
‘The scholarship on China is Orientalist,’ Wang Yongqing says. ‘The sentiment, however, is admirable.’ Lucas summons a server and offers fresh, cold martinis. Wang Yongqing waves the glass away. ‘We will agree an immediate increase of the Four Elementals. We expect a corresponding resolution of the Bairro Alto question.’
Wang Yongqing moves towards the door and the security of her colleagues but Lucas has a parting shot.
‘I hear that Duncan Mackenzie has been meeting the board of VTO.’
‘We understand it was to contract the Crucible replacement,’ Wang Yongqing says.
‘Your information is out of date. That order has been cancelled.’
She is good. He has just told her that her hired guns, the Vorontsovs, are untrustworthy and she betrays no tremor of surprise, no emotional tell. But she has been shaken. Tell that to your cronies.
The band takes its break. Lucas follows its leader to the bar.
‘Your chord sequencing is exquisite,’ Lucas says. Jorge leans on the bar, Lucas stands back to it, they catch each other peripherally, edge-of-eyeball. ‘You’ve simplified it since I last heard you.’
‘Last time you heard me play you stuffed the club with Corta goons,’ Jorge says.
‘It still is,’ Lucas says. Lucas slips into Portuguese. ‘I hoped you’d come.’
‘Jaime and Sabrina told me to turn you down. I almost did.’
‘Yet here you are.’
The bar-keep slides a glass across the glowing counter. Jorge looks at it like poison.
‘I recreated the cachaca.’
‘I have a confession …’
‘You never liked the cachaca.’
‘You’re not good at cachaca.’
The bar-keep pours a neat gin. Jorge sips, slips a wry smile of remembrance.
‘But you are good at gin. Thank you for noticing. The chord sequences. I’ve learned you suggest more with less. It took me a long time to learn that, and that there is too much in the guitar for a single life. That’s when you find your voice, your guitar. I was waiting for you to get in touch.’
‘I thought about coming to Queen to hear you.’
‘Instead, the royal summons. You are the only one in this room listening to us. You look like shit, coraçao.’
Lucas levers himself on to a bar stool.
‘It gets easier every day. A little. I tell myself that, but there was damage done on lift-off from Earth. Deep damage that won’t heal. The Earth will kill you, they say. It’s true. Just not immediately.’
Drums and bass have returned to their instruments, tuning, riffling, bouncing notes from each other.
‘I have to get back,’ Jorge says.
‘Of course of course. Jorge, afterwards, would you …’
‘It’s over, Lucas. You made it be over, if you remember.’
‘Just a drink. That’s all. Somewhere quiet. As quiet as I can get.’
The band looks over.
Again, the painful half-smile.
‘All right. Just a drink.’
‘Jorge, a request. Could you play …’
‘“Aguas de Marco”?’
‘Yes.’ Adriana’s favourite. She had asked for it at the end, play it, play it again, Lucas. He had turned away to bring her coffee – coffee and bossa – and she had gone.
‘Always a pleasure to play “Águas de Março”.’
Lucas sits at the bar listening to Jorge tune and fall into harmony with his band. A nod, they lead off the second set. Lucas listens until the first repeat, then hauls himself painfully from the stool to the duties of the party.
The bar-keep has adjusted the bar lighting so that Lucas and Jorge drink in a pool of soft gold. They sit in adjacent sides of a corner. The keeper tends to the small acts of theatre that make under-employed waiting-staff look busy.
‘The cafe is still there,’ Lucas says. ‘Rua Vinicius de Morais. Number 49. On the corner. You can pay for the window table where he sat and wrote the song. She is long gone but the family still lives in Ipanema, they say.’
‘Did you go in?’
‘No. I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the legend,’ Lucas says.
‘I can understand that.’
‘The Brasil of the heart is always more perfect.’
The bar-keep serves two fresh shots of Corta gin. Mist wreathes from the frozen glass.
‘I hated you when the terrestrials came,’ Jorge says. ‘Their fucking bots, looking into every eyeball, logging every soul. Queen never was a Corta town, but it hates you now.’
‘It has reason to hate me,’ Lucas says. ‘I’ve done terrible things, Jorge. Monstrous things. Crucible …’
‘Everyone knows.’
‘Everyone suspects. No one knows because no one wants to know. All the things I hoped for, all the things I did this to achieve, they’re further from me than ever.’
Jorge grips Lucas’s shaking hand. Light from the illuminated bar shines between the linked fingers.
‘I bring them all here, allies, enemies, rivals, lovers and we drink our gin and play our game of dragon and never once do we look up to see what’s darkening the sky. Amanda asked me what we Cortas want. Really want. I said family, first, family always but that wasn’t what she meant. She meant vision. The Suns have a vision, the Vorontsovs have a vision. The Mackenzies have always had independence. No one knows what the Asamoahs want, but they have a vision. I couldn’t answer Amanda then. I think I can now. My mother was deeply involved with the Sisterhood of the Lords of Now. She went to them to recruit madrinhas, she funded them, she helped build their Sisterhouses in Hadley and João de Deus. Mãe de Santo Odunlade was her confessor, in the final lunes. The Sisterhood was annihilated evacuating Lucasinho from João de Deus.’
‘The Mackenzie Massacre,’ Jorge says.
‘Is that what they call it?’
‘In Queen.’ Jorge lifts a finger for fresh drinks.
‘I have no time for their deities, but what drew my mãe draws me. This world is a laboratory, where humans experiment in cultures and societies and philosophies. New politics, new religions. To the end of creating something that will endure. Earth is collapsing, I saw it with these eyes. Earth is dying and decaying. All of human culture could be looted and burned, smashed by new ideologies. They have no respect for their world. If we make one mistake, Lady Luna will kill us. So we respect her. We know how fragile we are. There is no reason why humanity should not thrive here for thousands of years. That was Mãe Odunlade’s vision: a society that can exist, unbroken, for ten thousand years. Twice as long as any human culture. I like that. What would the moon look like after I am gone, after my five-hundred-times-removed descendants are gone? I don’t know. But there will be something, bigger, wiser and very, very old. Continuity, Jorge. Can you understand that?
‘I fear for the future, Jorge. I fear for the Earth, now I fear for our world. I fear for my son. I fear for him every second of every day. I fear that I am destroying the thing I swore I would preserve.
‘And then my enemies tell me that I have to decide. I have to choose an allegiance. And I’m afraid to, because I fear I will destroy everything.’
‘What are the choices?’
Lucas looks up.
‘No one has ever asked that question.’
Jorge tightens his hold.
‘So?’
‘Power, security for my family, or a new moon.’
‘Those sound like contradictions,’ Jorge says.
‘I fear they are,’ Lucas says.
‘Then simplify,’ Jorge says. ‘One thing you can deliver.’
‘I know what I want,’ Lucas says. ‘The problem is, to have that, I think I have to give all this up.’
‘Then it’s simple.’ Jorge releases his hold on Lucas’s hand and taps him gently on the brea
st. ‘Your heart, coraçao.’
‘But I’m afraid.’
‘Ah,’ Jorge says. ‘Always the scuttling fear. ‘
‘I fear that if I step away from the Eyrie, the moon will fall.’
Lucas raises a finger to summon the bartender.
‘Lucas, I need to go. I need to get back to Queen.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I know I don’t have to. But I need to.’
‘I need you.’
Hands touch on the glowing bar, fingers grip.
‘I can’t, Lucas. Your life would make me a prisoner. Security at my shoulder. Always afraid that someone would use the people I love against me. You are a beautiful man, but your world is poisonous.’
‘And I can’t call …’
‘No. There can be nothing between us. This is our first and last night together.’
‘Then kiss me.’
‘Yes,’ Jorge says. ‘Yes I will yes.’
Afterwards he picks up his guitar. The two men embrace, clumsy, encumbered, one-armed.
‘Lucas, that thing you fear. You only fear it because you think you’re alone.’
Then there is only the bar-keep and Lucas Corta at the glowing plane of the bar and beyond, unseen, ubiquitous as angels, his security.
The room is warm, comfortably furnished in beiges, tastefully decorated in framed prints, and it is a death-trap. Vidhya Rao sits panting in er well-upholstered chair, blinking, dazed, panicked. E must run, e must flee, e must do something. A thousand needs and notions swarm like insects and e cannot move.
Moments before, e was deep in the Three August Sages’ surrealism network, carefully so carefully chipping overburden from their imaginings of possible futures, revealing tesserae that hinted at an unseen mosaic. Those hints should have been enough. Hints were never enough for Vidhya Rao. E came back again and again to the Three August Sages: a 1950s Googie-style UFO diner with everyone as roller-skating Martians, a universe made of carnival-balloon demons, a 2020s Gold Coast sunrise party, a Hindu pantheon that spoke only in iambic rhyming couplets. Each time, e uncovered more of the mosaic. Fascination became fear, became terror. E had to see more, know more. Until e felt a vibration, a nerve touched, an alert triggered so sensitive only one who had spent days in the Three August Sages’ kaleidoscope of tumbling realities would be aware of it. Security was alerted. Whitacre Goddard knew what e had seen.
If Whitacre Goddard knows, the terrestrials know.
E must get out: of the room, of the Lunarian Society house, of Meridian.
E stands chest heaving on the balcony, a heavy neutro in a sari. E must move fast. E has never known how to do that.
Not that way, says a voice in er ear. A service exit highlights on er lens. Here.
E slams the service door behind er. Halfway down the steps e is stopped by a hard clattering rattle from inside the club. Again, closer, and again. E has never heard anything like it.
Drone-launched flechettes, the voice says. The drone is still in the building.
A sustained, meteorite rattle.
The standard load-out is four rounds.
Vidhya Rao hobbles painfully to the door to the service alley.
A moto will arrive in forty seconds.
‘Who are you?’ Vidhya Rao asks as e pulls open the service door. ‘You are not my familiar. I didn’t order a moto.’ E steps into the alley, a dark cave cut into raw rock.
Get back into the building.
‘Tell me, who are you,’ Vidhya Rao demands.
Get back at once!
Vidhya Rao sees lights, movement, mass; then e stumbles back into cover as the moto accelerates into the back wall of the service alley. The crash of impact sends er reeling.
The moto was hacked.
Vidhya Rao stares numb at the wreckage. The way is blocked. E imagines erself trying to clamber over the shattered aluminium and carbon. Back. Out. E is gasping by the third turn of the stairs.
‘Activate Whitacre Goddard personal security protocol.’
It is Whitacre Goddard trying to kill you, the voice says.
Vidhya Rao wrenches open the service door. The upper floor of the Lunarian Society is a surreal nightmare; every surface needled with toxic quills. Death by a hundred thousand spikes. There is a body at the top of the stairs. Vidhya Rao forces down er nausea and edges past the martyred corpse, wary of the needle-studded walls.
‘You’re them, aren’t you?’ Vidhya Rao asks as e ventures down the sweeping staircase. The Lunarian Club is shattered wreckage, chairs overturned, tables toppled, drinks and handbags discarded in the rush to escape. A single high-heeled shoe in the middle of the lobby.
I am an aspect of the Three August Sages, the voice says. I represent Taiyang.
‘I knew I felt someone else in the interface,’ Vidhya Rao says. E stumbles out on to the street. Emergency service drones are arriving by road and air; e weaves between them, apologises a path through the cordon of onlookers.
I have been monitoring your activity in the interface, the voice says. The fact that Whitacre Goddard and the terrestrials both want to kill you … interests us. Down!
Vidhya Rao throws erself hard to the street. Pieces crack, muscles tear. A shadow crosses er, a sudden gale buffets er. A flash of gold, and a beating roar fills er ears. Hands help Vidhya Rao to er feet. Every breath is inhaling broken glass. Out in the gulf of Orion Quadra huge wings beat: light flashes from the flier’s visor as she wheels to come in for another pass. Each hand carries a long blade: wings tipped in bone.
You are under the protection of Taiyang, security will arrive in approximately twenty seconds, the voice says.
The flier tucks her wings into a killing stoop. She pulls up: the air seems to boil around her. She beats furiously, trying to zig-zag away from the seething air but it follows her, a hive of seething black motes. Vidhya Rao sees fear on her face, then her wings disintegrate into shreds of fluttering membrane. Bone knives slash at air, a desperate, hopeless attempt at a claw-hold. Shrieks and screams from the streets. Legs and arms windmilling, the woman plummets to Gargarin Prospekt. The cloud of boiling air moves over the street and settles above Vidhya Rao in a smoky halo.
Security is in place, the voice says. You can call me Madam Sun.
‘Please keep back,’ Vidhya Rao shouts to the onlookers. ‘My security cloud will attack anyone it’s not keyed to recognise.’
The people need no warning. A moto arrives and opens. The swarm of micro-drones pours in.
This vehicle is secure, Madam Sun says. Vidhya Rao is flung down on to the seating as the vehicle goes to full acceleration. E glances behind. As e suspected, there is another moto behind her, matching every dodge and weave.
Whitacre Goddard is using the system to predict your movements, Madam Sun says. It can foresee with fifty per cent accuracy to a maximum of three minutes in your future. That forms the extreme forward horizon of their present. Accuracy is sixty per cent at one minute, ninety per cent at thirty seconds.
‘But you are the same system,’ Vidhya Rao says.
I am a sub-AI on the interface of Taiyang’s back door into the Three August Sages, Madam Sun says. My capacity to run predictive simulations is limited.
‘Are you really Lady Sun?’ Vidhya Rao asks.
Of course not.
‘You’re very like her.’
Thank you. Lady Sun is the primary user of the Taiyang interface, so I have modelled myself on her.
‘It wasn’t necessarily a compliment.’
I know. Stand by for sudden deceleration. The moto brakes savagely. Vidhya Rao reels forward. The security bots surge like oil. Vidhya Rao is flung sideways as the moto one-eighties. It dodges the pursuer, which brakes and turns, but even as Vidhya Rao reaches for handholds the moto veers again on to the 53rd North Bridge.
Ther
e was a roadblock at the 51st downramp, Madam Sun says. The 53rd North Bridge was not designed for vehicles; the moto hurtles across the narrow blade of construction carbon, millimetres from the handrails. Anyone on this bridge is dead. Vidhya Rao glances down. Lights. A void full of lights. The tree-tops and bright pavilions of Gargarin Prospekt are distant and deadly as dreams.
‘I see machines moving in on the east side,’ Vidhya Rao says.
I have a sixty per cent confidence rating they will not arrive in time to catch us, Madam Sun says. Three hijacked motos fall into pursuit. Vidhya Rao takes a long look back. Two of the pursuers are empty, pulled off their stands, but the hackers have trapped a group of children in the third.
Detouring to the 50th South freight elevator, Madam Sun says as it swerves on to the downramp and descends three levels. Hacked vehicles are covering the main down exits to Gargarin Prospekt.
The pursuers have fallen away. Vidhya Rao prays the children are safe.
The elevator platform descends with a speed that makes Vidhya Rao close er eyes. E opens them at the subtle sensation of vertical motion. The moto descends smoothly down the east wall of Orion Quadra.
There is a seventy-two per cent probability of Whitacre Goddard discovering my connection to your familiar within the next three minutes, Madam Sun says. It is inevitable we will try to out-predict each other.
Prophet hunting prophet through the shifting cloisters of the soon-might-be.
A sudden dark mass, looming; a terrible crash and jolt. A delivery dray has darted from the ascending platform on to the descender. The dray backs up the handful of centimetres the platform allows and rams the moto. Plastics crack and splinter. Vidhya Rao cries out. Again the dray backs and rams. Centimetre by centimetre it is pushing the moto towards the drop.
I am unable to work around the hack, Madam Sun says. Another strike, another hair’s breadth towards the long fall. I’m preparing to leave at the next platform. However …
‘The terrestrials have foreseen that.’
Yes. Units are moving to close down the exits.